Wasteland 2 - Update #8, More Areas, Mod Possibilities

April 5th, 2012, 00:44

Brian Fargo has penned a new Kickstarter update for Wasteland 2, which is currently just shy of $2M. Trying to drive more pledges, Brian promises two more area designers if they hit $2.5M and mod support if they hit $3M:

I would like to give a little visibility on what we would expect to add to the game if we hit $2.5 million and $3.0 million. And do keep in mind that ALL money raised goes into development.
Scope and scale is the number one request, and it is what we are focusing our monies on primarily. So at 2.5 million dollars we would bring in another couple of designers to help create more areas. This will not only increase the overall size and depth of the world, but it translates to more story lines and more player options as well. At this funding level we would also bring more level scripters in to allow us to get levels in faster. When we get levels in faster it allows more iteration time to really hone things in. I believe that iteration time is the single most important factor towards shipping a polished and deep game.
In addition, we will add more NPC portraits and equipment artwork as per what the fans have requested in the forums. We would also increase the music budget to allow Mark Morgan to layer in even more atmosphere. The bottom line is that this kind of budget ensures that Wasteland 2 is BIGGER than Wasteland 1. And for the people that remember little Billy from WL1… well he was left for dead and he is pissed.
The third most asked about feature is for us to provide a mod kit to allow players to create their own scenarios. I have always loved those kinds of tool-sets to set players loose to keep the world expanding. To create these kinds of tools is time consuming and requires a separate team of guys to do it. While we are not ready to commit to that feature yet, we can say that if we were to hit 3million dollars, it would be possible to do a mod kit without cutting into the plan for the main game. In fact, IF we ended up making the mod kit we would not release it until after Wasteland 2 shipped as our hands will be quite full to ensure things are done well. The game will also increase in scope as well so this is not a binary equation. As always, we will be posting polls in the forums to help with these sorts of decisions. Yes we are reading the forums!

Brian also comments they have begun pre-production and some new Kickstarter levels have been changed.More information.

Even though his attempts to keep it going are well placed it seems that the money has started to ran out. I see other recent projects by big names that didn't start with nearly as much momentum as I expected.

I like a good adventure game, but for the life of me I can't figure out how Double Fine was able to get over twice as many contributors than Wasteland 2 has so far. Was it just because it was the first project? Or did the documentary side really excite people that much? I'd love to see Wasteland 2 top $3 million, but that doesn't look very likely. I would say $2.5 could be a reasonable goal right now. So far, I have contributed a bit on Paypal and on Kickstarter, but can't really afford any of the really good options, like becoming an in-game NPC.

Can someone enlighten me as to what similar projects in scope have for budgets? For example, what were the budgets for Fallout and Fallout 2? How about Baldur's Gate and Planescape? What kind of budgets do more modern RPG's have: dragon age: origins, Risen, or maybe Divinity 2?

Originally Posted by rossrjensen
I like a good adventure game, but for the life of me I can't figure out how Double Fine was able to get over twice as many contributors than Wasteland 2 has so far. Was it just because it was the first project? Or did the documentary side really excite people that much?

This kind of reminds me of that Simpsons episode where mr Burns demands to know Homer's name after catching him red-handed spray painting a huge graffiti reading "My name is Homer Simpson" on the wall of his office in a final desperate attempt to force his boss finally learn his name.
The amount of DFA backers should hint that there simply are more people that like adventure games than old school RPGs. This does not surprise me at all. Adventure game fans are a lot less vocal than any other and almost universally ignored. I assume one reason that made many, if not most, of the DFA backers to support that project was that they wanted to make their presence known. In any case I find it hard to believe that a genre that produces on average one commercial game every week is anything but popular.

Originally Posted by rossrjensen
Can someone enlighten me as to what similar projects in scope have for budgets? For example, what were the budgets for Fallout and Fallout 2? How about Baldur's Gate and Planescape? What kind of budgets do more modern RPG's have: dragon age: origins, Risen, or maybe Divinity 2?

Somewhere fargo wrotes that fallout 1 was about 1.5M. guess F2 was about 2M.
BUT the tools AND knowledge are better these days. So more game for 2M then 1998.

seems mod support is still being seen as just something that benefits the players and not the devs as well. Only Beth seems to have caught on to the fact that modding actually sells games and keeps selling them years after release

Originally Posted by SonOfCapiz
seems mod support is still being seen as just something that benefits the players and not the devs as well. Only Beth seems to have caught on to the fact that modding actually sells games and keeps selling them years after release

The problem is that creating mod tools usually takes a really long time, that's why most devs doesnt support it, it's not within the budget usually.

Originally Posted by Gwendo
I don't know about you, guys. But I'm getting all that DLC vibe here. And this might be worse, as you'll be paying well before the game release without even really knowing what you're paying for.

I hope studios don't star saturating this kickstarter trend, specially if it's for these purposes.

Huh? Sorry, don't understand at all. What does W2 have to do with DLC?